


Never Alone

by flipflop_diva



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: Civil War (Movie), F/M, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, Injury Recovery, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Needs a Hug, On the Run, POV Steve Rogers, Protective Steve Rogers, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-17 12:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14831999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/pseuds/flipflop_diva
Summary: She risked everything to help him and Bucky escape. Now it was his turn to return the favor. Set post-Civil War.





	Never Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arsenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/gifts).



> Written for Arsenic for the Fandom 5k 2018 fest.
> 
> I've had this idea in my head probably since I first watched Civil War. But then I got Arsenic's prompts and they fit beautifully, so I decided maybe it was time I actually wrote it. It's a slightly AU Civil War, but it's what I would have wanted in my ideal Steve/Nat shipping world.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

_“I didn’t want you to be alone.”_

Steve didn’t know it at the time, but those words were going to repeat themselves in his head over and over and over every day for the next two months, and every time they did, they were going to be followed by the memory of Natasha’s arms sliding around his neck, of her pulling him toward her, of him leaning into her — her arms and her body warm and strong and soft.

It was almost a surreal moment, standing there in the church with Natasha after Peggy’s funeral, his every thought and sense still weighed down by a crushing grief. His first true love, gone forever. His main connection to a past that was always on his mind, broken. 

He had felt his world falling apart, slipping away, but then she was there, holding him, caring about him. He remembered the way her hair smelled as it tickled his noise — that scent of lavender mixed with the smell of a cool ocean breeze and something that he could never place but was distinctly her — and he remembered watching the light from the stained-glass windows hitting her hair just so, the strands red and fiery around her head. 

He remembered the way her eyes met his when she told him why she had really come. How carefully she moved toward him when she went to embrace him, like she was afraid he would break. 

And he remembered the gratitude in his heart when her arms slipped around his body and the overwhelming sensation that had overcome him, as the voice in the back of his mind had screamed out that he couldn’t lose her, too, that he couldn’t just let her walk out of that church and get on a Quinjet to Vienna without her knowing.

So he had pulled back from the embrace and met her eyes, looked deep into them — he remembered the way she had stared at him then, her eyes so big and so very green in the dim light of the church, and he remembered the way they fluttered closed as his hand moved to cup the back of her head, the soft silkiness of her hair slipping through his fingers.

And then he was pulling her toward him and his lips were on hers, and suddenly everything he had ever wanted to say to her but never quite could was coming through in the way he was kissing her, in the way he was holding her, and she wasn’t just letting him, she was kissing him back too.

And then she was pulling away, her eyes even wider than before, and he remembered thinking that even though he had never seen so many emotions crossing her face at once, he had no idea what was going through her head, had no idea what she was feeling.

But her hand had lingered on his arm and she had smiled — not wide, just small and a little sad — before she’d whispered, “I have to go,” and then she was gone, vanishing from his sight, the taste of her lips still lingering on his and the only sound in the air the memory of her other words: _“I didn’t want you to be alone.”_

They were words he repeated a few days later to Bucky and Sam, finally telling them the story as they drove through Germany in a getaway car Steve was sure Natasha would not approve of to meet up with Sharon who had stolen their gear back for them after the government had confiscated it.

Sam chortled when he finally told them what he had done, his eyes lighting up in amusement.

“You and Natasha!” he almost cackled. “It’s about time!”

“I still don’t know who Natasha is,” Bucky grumbled.

“Of course you do!” Sam said. “Small, redhead, you tried to kill her a couple times.”

“Sam!” Steve admonished, as Bucky made a soft noise in the backseat.

“Is that not true?” Sam said. “Because I seem to remember someone with a bullet wound through her shoulder the first time we fought this guy.” He gestured into the backseat with his thumb.

“It wasn’t Bucky’s fault.” Steve cast his eyes to the rearview mirror, but Bucky seemed more thoughtful and less upset by the turn this conversation was taking than he was.

“I didn’t say it was,” Sam said.

“Okay,” Bucky said. “I remember seeing her. In Vienna.” He shrugged. “I don’t remember much about the other times.”

“So you kissed her?” Sam said, and Steve was glad he seemed to be dropping the Bucky aspect for now. The two of them had been bickering nonstop since they went on the run, and even though Steve thought it might be a friendly rivalry type of thing, he wasn’t sure and his nerves were already on edge from what they were about to do. Being a fugitive on the run had never been part of the plan, and he kept seeing Natasha when he was brought in with cuffs on — “By the way,” she had said, “this is what worse looks like.” — and she had looked at him in such a way that he couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or secretly proud or hurt or pleased. 

_“I didn’t want you to be alone.”_

But now he was on the run and she was with Tony, and an inevitable conclusion to this war between them was approaching, and the last thing Steve needed was Bucky and Sam — the only two people besides Natasha who he really trusted and cared about in his world — going at each other. 

“Yeah,” Steve said, as he finally found the spot in the road that he and Sharon had agreed to meet, pulling over and turning the car off. “I kissed her.”

“And?”

“And what?” Steve turned to Sam and deliberately let his lips twist into a smirk — a beautiful expression Natasha would be so proud of. “That’s all you get.”

“What?” Sam said. “That’s an outrage. I’m texting Natasha.”

“You can’t text her. We’re on the run. She’s on the other side.”

“She’s a goddamn super spy, Steve. Do you honestly think she doesn’t know where we are right now?”

Steve didn’t answer. Sharon was there, pulling up in front of them. He got out of the car.

She met him by her trunk, a small smile on her face, but the expression in her eyes was guarded, haunted almost. It was a look Peggy had sometimes worn, when she didn’t want to tell him something bad.

Steve felt his insides twist at the sight.

“Sharon,” he greeted her. “You got it?”

“I got it,” she said, turning and flipping open the trunk. Steve let out a swoosh of breath at the familiar sight of a red, white and blue shield and a pair of black wings. 

“Are you going to get in trouble?” he asked.

“Probably.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s something else, Steve.” Her voice was calm, low, serious. His insides twisted some more.

“What?” he asked, and his voice sounded small to his own ears. 

“Before you escaped with Bucky, there was a lot of fighting.”

“I know.” He hadn’t seen any of it, but Sam had seen some and Bucky had vague recollections of it. He knew Tony had been part of it. Sharon. T’Challa. Probably Nat, though no one specifically had seen her.

“People got hurt.”

Steve’s eyes scanned Sharon’s face. “You?” he asked hesitantly, but she shook her head.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Other people.”

He felt the familiar rush of guilt that came every time something went wrong — usually on missions, sometimes in training, this time just collateral damage.

“Are they going to be okay?”

“Most of them.” Sharon’s eyes flickered toward the car where Sam and Bucky were still inside. Steve felt his heart leap into his throat. The expression on her face, the look in her eyes …

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Bucky,” Sharon said. She took a breath. Steve watched her shoulders rise and fall. She was bracing herself. He could tell. “He fought me.”

“I know …”

“And Tony. And King T’Challa.”

“I suspected.”

“And Natasha.”

There it was. Steve felt all the air in his lungs leave his body. Sharon continued. “She jumped on him, got on his shoulders. Somehow he got her off, pinned her down.”

Steve’s vision narrowed, his whole world shrinking in to the look on Sharon’s face. Her voice sounded far away, hallow.

“He choked her. Hard. She couldn’t get him to let go.” Sharon stopped talking.

Steve found air he didn’t know he had left. “But he did, right? He let go?”

“She’s in a coma, Steve. In the hospital. The doctors don’t think it looks good.”

Steve’s world bottomed out. He grabbed on to the trunk so he wouldn’t fall. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t anything.

His best friend. And the woman he was pretty sure he loved.

“I have to see her,” was all he managed to say, but Sharon was shaking her head. 

“It’s not a good idea. You’re a fugitive.”

“I have to see her.”

“But Bucky. Siberia. Steve, think about this.”

“I have to see her. Please. Help me. I have to see her.”

•••

_“I didn’t want you to be alone.”_

He couldn’t remember ever seeing her lie so still. He couldn’t remember ever seeing her look so pale. So small. So fragile. So many things she was never supposed to be. She was supposed to be strong, feisty, a blur of motion.

The mechanical beeping — her heart beat — seemed to fill the room, echoing roughly in his ears. The wires seemed to be everywhere. In her hands, her arms, her chest.

And then there was her neck. It hurt to look at it. So swollen. A mix of dark blue and green.

How hard had Bucky choked her?

Enough to almost crush her windpipe, Sharon had said. Enough to stop the oxygen to her brain. Enough that Tony had tried to do CPR while they frantically called for an ambulance. Enough that she was still unconscious forty-eight hours later. Enough that they weren’t sure if she was ever going to wake up.

Steve drew closer to the bed, slipped his hand under hers. She was so cold, so still. 

There was no one around. Sharon had kept her word. Tony — Tony, who was going to come after them as soon as Steve stepped out of the hospital — had helped. Because it was Natasha. Because Tony thought he owed her for her choosing his side.

“I’m doing this for her, not for you.” His message to Steve through Sharon. Steve didn’t care. They had gotten him in — into the hospital, into her room.

“I need you to fight,” he told Natasha now. He didn’t know if she could hear him. He had to believe she could. “I know you’ve spent your whole life fighting. I know you’re probably tired. But I need you to fight a little more. I need you to hang on. I need you to survive.”

He leaned down, pressed his lips to her forehead, listened to the sound of the ventilator pushing air through her lungs.

“Just hang on for me, Natasha,” he whispered. “When this is over, with Bucky, I will come back for you. I promise. I will come back for you.”

He left her then, not because he wanted to but because he had to. He had his own fight to finish.

“That was stupid,” Sam said when Steve slipped into the car, but his voice was gentle, kind. He knew what Natasha meant to Steve. He just also knew that getting caught was only going to make things worse. If things could get worse. “I’ll bet you anything Stark is tracking us. They’re going to know we’re going to the airport.”

“It’ll be okay,” Steve said, voice tight.

“If we get caught, will it have been worth it?” It was a legitimate question, even if Steve suspected Sam already knew the answer. After everything they had just gone through to keep Bucky free — after everything Sam had helped Steve go through to keep his best friend free — he had put it all in jeopardy for a five-minute visit to a woman who wouldn’t even know he had been there.

But there was only one answer, one truth, and he knew Sam would understand.

“Yes,” he said, and then added, “I couldn’t let her be alone.”

•••

Compartmentalize. That’s what Natasha would say, what she would do. Put all the emotion — the pain, the guilt, the fear, the worry — in one spot and lock it away. Deal with it later, when they made it safely on the Quinjet, when Bucky’s name was cleared, when they’d found the other winter soldiers.

Concentrate on the fight. On getting out of there alive.

They had all come when he had called — Clint, Wanda, Sam’s new friend Scott. He owed it to them to keep his focus on the here and now. Make it to the Quinjet. Make it to Siberia. Those were the only goals.

He focused on the fight — on the feel of his shield in his hand, on the power in his body as he struck and threw, on the shrinking distance between him and the Quinjet.

“You have to go,” Sam said, breathless. “The rest of us aren’t getting out of here.”

“I’m thinking he’s right about that.” It was Clint, his voice dry.

He wanted to argue, to protest, but there was no time — no time to find a new plan, no time to give into the surge of guilt that even more of his friends were going to be hurt because of him, because of Bucky, no time to do anything but run, run toward the hanger as Wanda struggled to keep a path free for them.

So they ran, he and Bucky, and he focused on his goal — get to the Quinjet, get to Siberia, find the other winter soldiers, clear Bucky’s name.

They ducked under debris, as rubble crashed just inches behind them, darting toward the Quinjet.

And then time stood still.

A lone figure stepped out in front of them. An angel dressed in black with a fiery red halo.

He stared at her, blinked, glanced at Bucky to see if maybe he was hallucinating. But Bucky was staring, too, looking just as shocked.

She looked pale — too pale. Unsteady. She stepped toward them, but her gait was shaky, like she might fall.

“Natasha.” Her name was a whisper on his tongue. “How did you get here?”

She stared at him, her eyes studying his face. “You’re not going to stop, are you?” She sounded tired. Defeated almost.

“I can’t.”

“Then I’m really going to regret this.” She raised her arm, her fist aimed straight at him. He didn’t move, couldn’t move, just stared at her, braced himself, waited for the sting of her Widow’s bite, wondered in the back of his mind what it would feel like, how fast he could still move after getting hit.

He could be fast. She was faster, normally, but she was still recovering. She didn’t look like she could move well at all, but he knew looks could be deceiving. She was strong. But he was much stronger. He could disable her, knock her out. 

He _could_ knock her out, but would he? Could he purposely hurt her if it came down to a choice? A choice between her and Bucky?

He waited. Her fist clenched. And then a movement, her arm changing directions, and the electric bolts were flying past him. 

He stared at her stunned, saw a figure in black from the corner of his eye. T’Challa.

“Go.” Natasha’s voice, so quiet, yet strong.

He stared at her, watching her fire again.

“Come with me.”

“You know I can’t.” She didn’t look at him when she answered.

“Steve, come on!” Bucky, beside him, yelling now, starting to run toward the plane. “We don’t have much time.”

“Go,” Natasha repeated. “Go now.”

He moved, one step in front of the other, but his feet weren’t leading him toward the plane, but to her. He had to be close to her, to touch her.

His arm wrapped around her, found her waist, tugged her to him.

“Steve,” she whispered. “You have to go.”

The palm of his free hand pressed itself against her cheek. She was clammy. Cold. He bent his head.

“I will come back for you.” A whisper in her ear. And then he found her lips, kissed her. Harder than in the church, with more feeling than in the church.

He needed her to know he was telling the truth. He needed her to believe him.

And then he was running, toward the Quinjet, toward Bucky. Compartmentalizing the way she had taught him. He grabbed the controls, hollered at Bucky to get ready, and then they were off, wheels leaving the ground, heading toward open air.

He should have stared straight ahead, thought about nothing else, but he turned his head to the side, just so, saw the electric blasts leave her Widow’s bite one more time. And then he saw her arm, dropping to her side. Her knees buckled. She fell.

The last thing he saw as he directed the Quinjet into the sky, toward Siberia, toward redemption for Bucky, was Natasha, moments after she saved them, after she chose them, after she let them go, lying crumpled on the ground, unmoving.

_“I didn’t want you to be alone.”_

•••

It was the longest two months of Steve’s life. Everything was a mess. His friends were locked up. The Avengers were over, more completely than the Accords ever could have done alone. Bucky was going back into cryofreeze. And Natasha … 

Natasha was out there somewhere, sick and hurt, and even with the best technology in the world, no one seemed to be able to tell him more than that.

T’Challa had taken Steve and Bucky back to Wakanda after everything that went down in Siberia.

“I can keep you safe,” he said, and he pointed to Bucky. “And I know someone who can help.”

Steve hadn’t bothered to ask questions, not even to wonder why he was doing this, after he had just watched Tony and him beat the hell out of each other.

But it turned out that Wakanda was the best place they could be, and T’Challa turned out to be more help than Steve ever would have imagined.

T’Challa was the one who told Steve where General Ross had locked up his friends. And he was the one who gave him the very little information he did have about Natasha.

“I am sorry,” T’Challa said to him that first night they were there. Bucky had gone off with T’Challa’s sister, Shuri, to discuss some ways she might be able to help him.

Steve glanced over at T’Challa, as they stood side by side, looking over the grounds of Wakanda, a place that Steve had no idea existed until just hours ago. “I don’t think you are the one who has anything to be sorry about.”

T’Challa lowered his head. “You are wrong,” he said. “I told them what she did.”

He didn’t have to mention her by name. Steve felt his heart drop. He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before answering.

“I don’t think it would have mattered,” he finally said. “She snuck out of the hospital after waking up from a coma. No one was going to think she did it to stop me.”

“They might have,” T’Challa said, but Steve didn’t feel like arguing the point. It wasn’t going to change anything now.

“Do you know if she’s okay?” he asked instead.

“I know they took her to the hospital,” he replied. “I am afraid I do not more.” He paused, looking almost upset. “I do not think it would be wise if I inquired too much.”

“No,” Steve said, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t. You’re already doing so much.”

“I am very sorry, though.”

“It’s okay,” Steve said again. “I’m going to get her back.”

•••

It turned out to be a lot harder getting his friends back than it would have been if Natasha were with him. She was the only one he knew who had been to the Raft before.

They had talked about it once, a lifetime ago before SHIELD fell. They were on a mission with a lot of down time. He told her a couple stories from the war. She told him about some of the horrible people she had helped SHIELD capture. Then she told him about the Raft and how the worst people were kept there and how she went once with Fury. A prison in the middle of the ocean, not traceable by sonar, not trackable by anything else. 

A place built to keep the enemies who would destroy the world. Now, Steve thought bitterly, used to keep his friends, who only wanted to save the world, locked up.

But it wasn’t hopeless. He had Shuri and he had T’Challa and they both were doing everything they could to help him. A month after he had escaped to Wakanda, T’Challa told him he had learned that Ross had Natasha moved to the Raft too.

“So she’s okay?” Steve had said.

“I do not know,” T’Challa had said in response, but Steve had seen Shuri cast him a small side-eye at his words and he had a feeling they both knew more than they were telling. But he didn’t question it, instead just giving Shuri all the information he could remember Natasha telling him.

Shuri did the rest and a few weeks later she presented to him, with a beaming grin on her face, a bag full of tech, a map of the Raft and a list of instructions for how to easily break in and break out his friends.

“Thank you,” he told her again the next day as he prepared to board the Quinjet. “I owe you.”

“Yes,” Shuri said. “You do owe me lots, Steven Rogers.”

“Don’t listen to her,” T’Challa said. “We are happy to help.”

Steve looked over at Shuri again. “You’ll take care of Bucky?” he said.

Shuri grinned again. “Yes,” she said. “I will fix your broken white boy.”

Steve laughed, shook hands with T’Challa, thanked them both again and then it was time.

•••

It was far easier to break into the Raft, thanks to Shuri’s meticulous instructions, than we would ever have expected. She gave him explicit details — where to find it, when to find it, how to knock out the guards on duty, how to release the cells.

By the time he raced into the area where all his friends had been held, they were all getting to their feet and looking cautiously out of their cells.

“Took you long enough,” Sam said when Steve finally appeared in the doorway.

Steve couldn’t help but smile, even as his eyes traced over his friends. Sam, Clint and Scott all looked a lot more ragged and beat up then he remembered. Tired and thinner. Wanda … oh god, Wanda …. with a straitjacket and was that a shock collar? She looked like she had been through hell, but she was peering at him with something akin to hopefulness in her eyes.

He looked around, trying to see …

He stopped, feeling the blood drain from his face. In the cell closest to the door, huddled in a corner against the wall, curled up in an almost fetal position, was Natasha. 

She wasn’t moving.

He yanked open the door to her cell, flying through it and dropping to his knees by her side. His fingers automatically reached out to find her pulse, even though he could tell she was breathing. Faintly, but she was breathing.

Her pulse vibrated under his fingers, weak and shallow but there. 

She was almost deathly white beneath the orange jumpsuit they’d put her in, and even just looking at her, he thought she must be at least fifteen pounds lighter than when he had last seen her.

He stared around at the guys and Wanda.

“She hasn’t really been conscious since they brought her in,” Clint said, and he sounded horrified even as he said it.

Steve wanted to ask more, but he knew time was ticking. Shuri had told him he had maybe twenty minutes at most to get in and get out.

“Come on,” he said. “We have to go. Clint, Scott, help Wanda.”

He reached down, lifted Natasha into his arms. Her head lolled against his chest as he silently confirmed that she was definitely pounds lighter than she should be. But that would have to wait. Escape was first.

•••

They couldn’t go back to Wakanda. It was one thing for T’Challa to take in two fugitives. It was quite another to take in seven. But he had given Steve coordinates to a safe house in a country about two hundred miles from Wakanda.

“I have someone who can check in on you,” he had said. “If you need something, I will know.”

They touched down about a mile from the location of the safe house, in a sheltered area next to a small hill. There were no other houses or towns for hundreds of miles, no one to spot the Quinjet or them.

They turned the cloaking on the Quinjet anyway and set off, Steve carrying Natasha, Clint and Scott helping to support Wanda.

It didn’t take them long, but every few minutes, Steve brushed his fingers across her mouth, felt to make sure she was still breathing. They had wrapped her in a blanket, and he could feel her shivering despite the perspiration covering her whole body. He wasn’t actually sure how they were going to take care of her once they got to the safe house. She needed to be fed, but if she wasn’t conscious …

He needn’t have worried. They found the key, pushed open the door to the safe house and stood gaping at the supply of medical supplies that were awaiting them in the living room.

“How?” Clint gaped.

“ _Who_ is your contact?” Sam asked.

Steve was still staring at everything. “T’Challa,” he said.

“That king guy who tried to kill us?” Scott asked in a half-horrified, half-amazed tone.

“Yeah,” Steve said.

“Man, you miss a lot when you’re trapped in an underground prison,” Scott said, shaking his head.

“Come on.” Sam was gesturing to Steve. “Let’s get her comfortable.”

There were three bedrooms in the safe house, it looked like. One bathroom. A living room and a kitchen. They laid Natasha in the room right off the living room, to make it easier for them to trade off watching her.

With Sam’s help, they got her hooked up to two IVs. One for nutrients since no one knew if she’d had anything to eat in two weeks, and the other for the medicine that had also been left. Steve had no idea how T’Challa knew how sick she was, but then a memory flashed across his mind — Shuri side-eyeing her brother when he told Steve he didn’t know if Natasha was okay. He had thought then they might have known more than they said. Someday he would have to ask them.

They took shifts sitting with her, changing her IVs when she needed it, wiping her down when she sweated through her clothes, covering her with blankets when she started to shiver. Or at least they were supposed to take shifts. But Steve told the others they needed to rest and he didn’t mind.

And he didn’t mind. When he wasn’t with her, he couldn’t concentrate on anything else. All he wanted was to hold her hand, smooth her hair back, talk to her quietly and let her know he was there and she wasn’t alone.

A week after they had arrived, Steve found himself sharing Natasha-watching duty with Clint. Clint and Scott had spent their time trying to see if they could convince Ross to give them a deal — to let them go home to their families if they could be put on house arrest. They were leaving in the morning to make it official, but Steve could tell Clint felt guilty leaving Natasha when she hadn’t woken up.

“As soon as it’s safe, I’ll make sure she contacts you,” Steve told him quietly. “You have to do what’s best for your family.”

Clint looked over at him, studying him carefully. “You take care of her,” he said. “Don’t let her do anything stupid.”

Steve couldn’t help the amused smile that came to his face. “You know that’s easier said than done.” He paused. “But you know I’ll protect her with my life.”

“I know,” Clint said. “You love her.”

The words seemed to hang in the air. Steve blinked.

“What?” he managed, but his voice came out way too high.

Now it was Clint’s turn to grin. “You think none of us notice?” He chuckled softly. “None of us are blind. We see how you two are with each other.”

“I …” he started, but stopped, not even knowing what he was going to say. He settled on, “I don’t know that she feels the same.”

Clint snorted. “She evaded doctors and nurses to sneak out of the hospital two hours after she woke up from a coma. You really think she did that because you two are ‘just friends’?”

Steve didn’t have an answer for that. He stared at Clint, memories flashing through his mind. Kissing her in the church after Peggy’s funeral, kissing her in the Quinjet hangar before he and Bucky escaped.

“I’m an idiot,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” Clint said, leaning back in his chair. “You are.”

•••

Steve was with Natasha when she finally woke up. It was late, some time past midnight and hours after Sam and Wanda had drifted off to bed. He was sketching in a little notepad he’d found in a drawer when he heard the slight creaking of the bed next to him.

He looked up instantly.

“Hey, soldier,” she croaked.

“Nat,” he whispered. The pad he had been drawing in fell to the floor, the pencil following. In an instant he was on the edge of the bed, taking her hand.

“You’ve been sleeping for a long time,” he told her.

“You saved Bucky?” she asked.

“I did.”

“You saved the world?”

“Not exactly.”

She stared at him for a second. “You saved me?” she finally said.

“Of course,” he told her. He squeezed her hand. “I didn’t want you to be alone.”

A soft smile broke out across her face. “I’m not alone,” she whispered. “I have you.”

She yawned. Her eyes were drooping a little. He knew she was going to be asleep again in a moment or two.

He had a lot to tell her, a lot he had wanted to say to her for a very long time, but it could wait. They were together, and the one thing they had plenty of was time.

_I didn’t want you to be alone._


End file.
